by Ben Coes
There were two ways to access the pumping station. One was to use a code generated in Dallas upon orders from the CEO of the company. The other was by having Dewey’s eyes read by the iris scanner at its entrance at the seafloor.
Something told him they wouldn’t be calling Dallas for the code.
Dewey had spent months learning how to be a prisoner, how to survive, how to escape. When you’re a prisoner, what’s most important is patience and a willingness to seize opportunities when they present themselves. The amount of risk a prisoner should take in trying to fight or escape is directly proportional to the degree of likelihood you’ll be killed once you’ve served your purpose to your captors. If you’re being held for political reasons and will likely be released someday, it’s best to be patient and wait. If there’s no doubt you’ll die, then you find a way to act at the first opportunity. If opportunities don’t arise, create them.
He reached up and wiped the blood from his eyes. He wasn’t dead yet. I don’t want to die—not here, not now. He thought of his wife and son, both long dead. He had to live. He had to make his son, wherever he was, proud of him.
He leaned back and waited for the gunmen—or rather, the terrorists—to return.
After an hour, three of them came to retrieve him. Two trained their Kalashnikovs on him as the third unchained him from the pole.
They led him out of the infirmary and across the deck. Bodies were strewn everywhere. As they walked past the hotel, he could hear voices. There were still men alive. One of the gunmen opened the hotel door. They let Dewey inside. Hundreds of his men sat in rows on the floor, hands behind their backs. In front of them, half a dozen gunmen stood with rifles and machine guns at the ready.
From the back, a voice called out.
“Chief,” a man yelled. “Don’t believe a fucking thing they say!”
“They’re going to kill us!” another voice yelled out.
From the side of the room, Esco approached. He looked at Dewey. His left eye had a bandage on it now. Dewey’s swing had done serious damage.
“If you want these men to live, we need your help,” Esco said.
“Fuck yourself,” Dewey said.
Esco nodded at one of the gunmen. He pointed his Uzi at one of the workers seated in the front row. He pulled the trigger and blew off the back of the man’s head in a violent burst. Behind him, another man screamed. A bullet had pierced the first man’s skull and had exited and then entered the second man’s chest. He slumped in agony.
“It’s all in your hands, Chief,” Esco said with a sickeningly serene smile. He turned to the gunman. “Put him out of his misery,” nodding to the man who’d been hit in the chest and continued to scream.
The gunman stepped forward and dispatched him with a single shot. More than one crew member began to sob.
“I’ll help you,” said Dewey. “Let me say something to them.”
“Go ahead.”
Dewey stepped forward. “There are hundreds of you!” he shouted. He glanced at Esco. “You want to live, storm the gunmen and kill them!”
He got the words out before Esco hammered him on the side of his head with the butt of his rifle. The room full of roughnecks erupted in yelling and screams as the terrorists hauled Dewey away, but volleys of gunfire silenced the outcry and the doors quickly closed.
They pulled Dewey across the deck, the tip of a rifle pressed hard into his back. The sun was high in the sky, scorching hot as they passed downstairs to the freight riser. It was a hub of activity, at least half a dozen of Esco’s men running around. Two of the men were already dressed in deep-sea diving suits. At the side of the deck, on the freight platform, a large steel object nearly six feet high reflected the sunlight: a massive bomb.
So he was right. The seafloor was their destination and the pumping station would be their target.
“Put on the suit,” Esco ordered.
They unchained him as two gunmen trained their rifles on him. Dewey slowly pulled the heavy suit on as he looked around the platform. He knew most of the conspirators by name, but he didn’t recognize the two men already suited up. They looked ex-military. Operatives, perhaps mercenaries. They certainly weren’t members of his crew. They must have come with the Montana.
It all added up now. A bitter smile spread across Dewey’s mouth as he began to see the thread of the conspiracy laid out before him, the sheer scale of it. And he had missed it all.
If he lived, he would find out who was behind the operation and hunt them down. First he’d kill Pazur. Then Esco. Then their bosses, and their bosses. For every one of his men they killed he’d kill a hundred; for every drop of blood, he’d spill a gallon; for all of the pain, he would inflict limitless agony on each of them.
But he had to live to do it.
Under a vicious midmorning sun, Dewey and the two guards strapped the steel deepwater helmets on and took the big open-cage freight elevator down. The helmets were very heavy, made of synthetic steel. The body suits were made of triple-redundant Kevlar on steel frames, all designed to withstand the fierce pressure and bitter cold temperatures of the depths below. Each man was connected to the rig by an oxygen tube that extended down as they descended, their lifeline to the surface, fitted with a communications link and a complex air-pressure equalizer that enabled the men to descend and ascend quickly without the usual acclimation periods that a free diver needs.
As the elevator hit waterside, he looked up one last time. He made eye contact with Esco. Then, the platform plunged beneath the surface.
They descended through the murky water. One guard held an old, high-powered APS underwater assault rifle. The APS was a Russian-made armament developed for Russian combat frogmen. It fired long, dagger-sharp steel darts capable of penetrating most material, certainly Dewey’s heavy suit. That was how they’d get rid of him after the scanner read his iris, he guessed
The cage dropped straight down, latched between two of the four oil chutes. Halogen lights every ten yards gave off a dull green hue. After more than ten minutes of steady descent, they reached the ten-pole marker, a red and white flash that indicated that they were ten yards above the seafloor.
Dewey remembered now why he didn’t take the trip to the seafloor very often. It was a depressing place. It felt like another planet, a dark and silent place, desolate and uninhabited. The cage hit the bottom with a heavy thud. Led by the rifle-wielding diver, he stepped off the grate and onto the seafloor.
Beneath Capitana, the pipes converged at the pumping station, the last part of Capitana that had been installed. Doing so had required six specially rigged oil tankers, each filled on the outer edge with massive weight to act as ballast as the ships hauled the unit between them three hundred miles from Buenaventura on the Colombian coast. The station alone had cost nearly a billion dollars to build and install. Within its six-story housing sat one of the world’s most powerful pumping units. Above the intake unit was the processing system that separated raw oil and natural gas then pumped both up to the surface. This, the heart of the rig and its conduit to the Capitana oil field itself, was what the terrorists wanted to destroy.
Dewey heard the radio in his helmet click. The first words were in Arabic, one of the other divers, reporting to the group above. Esco’s voice responded in kind. Then Esco addressed Dewey.
“Chief,” Esco said. “Can you hear me?”
“Fuck yourself.”
“The temptation in the coming minutes will be to not cooperate with us. I want you to listen carefully.”
After a minute, someone screamed, then the sound of gunfire ripped through the earphones.
“That was Haig.”
Dewey listened as the screaming continued. Then, another gun blast. The screaming stopped.
“In front of me are approximately twenty men,” said Esco. “They’re what’s left of your precious foremen. Every time you disobey me in the coming minutes, one of them dies. Got it?”
“Yes.”
Dewey
looked around. As always, he was astonished by the sight of the massive structure. He looked at the windowless, six-story cement and steel box that housed the pumping station. Algae and barnacles now encrusted a good deal of the station. Horizontal ductwork spidered out from the station as far as he could see.
“You two, lift it,” one of the divers ordered. Dewey and one of the men lumbered forward and lifted the big boxlike bomb. It was very heavy. They walked it a few feet, then put it down. They had to move it in small increments toward the pumping station door. Finally, they made it and set it down.
“Did he do it?” Esco asked through the radio.
“Yes,” said the diver now holding the harpoon rifle.
“What explosives are you using?” Dewey asked.
“None of your business,” Esco replied.
“HMX?”
“Mmm, so you know a little of explosives? No, not HMX. Old-school, as you say. Wouldn’t do what we need down there.”
“Cubane?”
“Closer. It’s called octanitrocubane. You won’t have heard of it.”
As Esco talked, Dewey studied the two divers. One stood at Dewey’s height, six foot three. The rifle-carrying one was shorter. The tall one would be a challenge. The shorter one would be easier. As long as they had the APS, however, all bets were off.
Once again he recalled the words from training: If it’s a certainty you’ll die, then you have to risk it all.
“Octanitrocubane,” Dewey said. “Sounds interesting. Replace the hydrogen in the cubane with nitrogen.”
“Thereby removing the need for oxygen, giving us the ability to do what we’re about to do.”
“So you blow up the pumping station? Someone rebuilds it. What’s the point?”
“It’s not about the station, Chief; it’s about the field.”
“All because you didn’t get a raise, Esco?”
The radio crackled with laughter.
“Hardly. Although I’ll be the first to say you’re a stingy motherfucker.”
“If you didn’t smell like a goat I would’ve paid you more.”
“Another good one. Very funny. Though I’ll be honest, I didn’t appreciate that one.”
The sound of gunfire echoed through the earphones.
“That was Caldez,” Esco said. “He didn’t think much of your joke either.”
Dewey’s stomach tightened. “I’ve obeyed every order, you son of a bitch!” he yelled. “You said you wouldn’t kill any more of my men!”
“Did I say that? My bad. I don’t like being compared to farm animals.”
Dewey held his tongue.
“We’re at the entrance,” the tall diver said.
“It’s very simple,” said Esco. “We know you’re the only person who can open the station. So open it.”
Dewey stepped into the small enclosure at the entrance to the pump station. His mind raced. If he refused, they’d start killing men on deck. Ultimately, they’d kill everyone, including him. It would deny the terrorists entry to the pumping station, but detonating the bomb outside might do every bit as much damage anyway.
On the other hand, if he let them in the station, he’d have a certain amount of time before the bomb exploded, the men with him, the men atop the derrick, especially Esco, would need time to escape, assuming this was not a suicide attack. In any case, his men would live a little longer and there’d be at least some chance of saving them.
Of course, once he opened the door, he became immediately expendable.
With no good option, Dewey stepped forward into the enclosure and looked through his visor into the small lens. He held his eyes open for several seconds. With a loud noise, the door to the pump station opened, a series of large halogen lights clicked on automatically and illuminated what looked like a massive factory, with literally hundreds of pipes that twisted their way in different formations around a center tunnel that stood vertically and ran upward toward the surface. Four large turbines which were powered by a set of triple-redundant electric cables from above were bolted to the walls and ceiling above the cobweb of piping.
Seize the opportunity, he thought.
Dewey moved. While his captors stared momentarily at the interior of the pumping station, he stepped through the entry alcove, out of the line of sight of the door, toward the tangle of piping. He broke right, stepping along the cement floor of the station, then ducked against the wall, moving toward the back of the room.
He suddenly heard the frantic words of one of the divers in Arabic over the radio.
As long as Dewey was against the wall, he was vulnerable. If he could make it to the far side of the pipes at the center of the room, it would be difficult for the terrorists to get a clean shot. He kept moving along the wall, but looked back, seeing the tip of the rifle emerge from the side of the entrance, now more than twenty feet from where he crouched. The shorter diver was following him, moving in for a shot. More frantic words from the diver echoed on the radio. Suddenly, Esco’s voice barked into the radio, also in Arabic, interrupting the diver. Dewey pressed forward, then turned. He watched as the diver turned, stepped back toward the door. Esco had told the diver to stop. The bomb. It was the bomb that had brought them down here. Dewey was now expendable.
Dewey watched from the back of the station as the diver slung the rifle over his shoulder and the pair struggled to move the bomb into place. Dewey sidled to the back of the station, where he knew lay his only chance of survival. There he came upon a large black locker. He pulled the door open, revealing an underwater welding unit, a pair of emergency air tanks that could be attached to the valve at the waist belt of the Kevlar suit, and a long combat knife.
He picked up the knife and stuck it in his suit’s utility belt, then slipped back into the forest of pipes.
Esco barked more words in Arabic, then cleared his throat and let out a maniacal laugh. “Chief,” he said, reverting to English. “In case I don’t have the chance to say this in person, I want to thank you for your help. Your mother would be proud of you.”
Then Dewey felt it. Imperceptible at first, like a puff of cold wind. He felt the air tug at his lungs. The feeling grew stronger, until he understood what was happening. He was no longer getting air from his tube. He yanked at the air tube that connected to his steel helmet.
“Is that you I hear coughing, Chief?” asked Esco, laughing. “Just swim to the surface. There’s plenty of air up here.” The sound of his chuckle rattled in the helmet.
They’d left the communications link intact but shut off the oxygen line. The good news was that the diving suit’s air valve had a safety catch to prevent pressurized seawater from rushing into his suit and crushing and drowning him simultaneously. The bad news, he had no air. Within a few minutes, he’d pass out. Soon after that he’d suffocate within his mask. He knew he couldn’t scale the ladder in time.
Suddenly, Dewey felt himself yanked violently to the side by a sharp tug on his cable. They were trying to reel him in from the deck above, using the mechanical winch. His steel boots suddenly left the ground and he was ripped sideways. Frantically, he drew the knife and cut the cable, air tube, communications wire, and all. He dropped back to the seabed, untethered to the platform above.
Across the pumping station, halogen lights on the helmets of the divers moved out of the alcove, heading for the elevator. Dewey hurried out of the pipe network after them, his chest tightening. But time was passing. He was suffocating.
He came upon the taller of the two men as he opened the door to the elevator. Dewey lunged at him and wrestled him, slow-motion style, to the seabed. Looking up, he saw the shorter terrorist train the APS at him. Then he heard it, like a snapping twig; the click of the rifle’s trigger. With all of his strength Dewey swung the big man fully around, letting him fall atop him now, so that his back faced the weapon as it launched. The explosive crack of the APS thundered through the water as the needle-like projectile sliced through water and plunged into the back of the big div
er. Dewey looked into the man’s helmet, at his eyes, which bulged. He watched as the helmet filled with blood and lethally pressurized ocean water.
The shooter tried to fire again, but the weapon failed. He dropped and lumbered in slow-motion through the freight elevator door.
Struggling to follow, Dewey now knew what it meant to suffocate. He began to feel the pain that oxygen deprivation causes, in the head at first, then pulsing through the body. He tried to breathe one last gulp of air but could not. His helmet was empty. He watched as the second diver entered the cage.
You fucked up, he thought. You should’ve gone for the spare oxygen tank.
Pain consumed him and he felt helpless. The sight of the terrorist climbing into the freight cage intermingled with blackness as his mind began to shut down. At that moment, Dewey remembered his family farm in Maine. He’d always imagined he’d die on the farm. He thought of the fields, wheat-colored and dry.
“Help me, God,” he said aloud.
And it was then, from somewhere within himself, where rational thought is secondary and raw, native instinct is the master; where true bravery either flourishes or is altogether absent; where a man’s will to survive is either surrendered or burns like an inferno, Dewey found inner strength.
He plunged toward the freight cage. The terrorist, unfamiliar with the lift, worked at the switch to start the elevator’s ascent. Dewey flung the door open, grabbed the man’s shoulder, and pulled him down. The diver kicked the suffocating, weakened Dewey away, but Dewey grabbed again, this time holding his opponent’s leg. Slowly, the diver managed to stand, too strong, too fresh with oxygen.
Desperately, with his free hand Dewey pulled the knife and plunged it into the air valve just above the man’s belt, the one place unprotected by the suit’s thick Kevlar. Blood shot out into the water like dye. The loss of pressure crushed the terrorist in a swift, excruciating moment as water poured into the suit.
Dewey was delirious. More than three minutes had passed since he’d taken a breath.